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10 - Argument Structure 1: verbs in the driving seat

Motivation for argument structure

5 minute exercise

What is wrong with the following sentences?

  1. Jack gave Mary
  2. Petula put the beans
  3. Julie laughed Peter

Verbs select the number of entities in the sentence. Give and put select 3 participants, but there are only 2 in the sentence. Laugh selects 1 participant, but there are 2 in the sentence.

Valence

What is the valence of the following verbs?

  1. Drive
  2. Donate
  3. Mix
  4. Yawn
  5. Slap
  6. Rain

A verb 'begs to be completed into a sentence' (Tomasello, 1992)

The verb implies a certain number of participants (Valence)

Valence can range from 0 to 3.

Psycholinguistic studies demonstrate that even when we hear verbs in isolation we mentally represent the number of participants (e.g. Shapiro et al. 1987 lexical decision task, or Kim & Thomson, 2000)

Thematic relations (roles)

Look at the following sentences:

  1. Jane fears Peter

  2. Peter scares Jane

  3. Paul liked the play

  4. The play pleased Paul

  5. Mary gave Pete a present

  6. Pete received a present from Mary

These are "mirror image" sentences in the sense that both sentences in each pair describe (more or less) the same situation, but they have opposing word orders.

We can see that in order to use a verb properly, knowing the valence is not enough. We need to know which roles come in which positions. Otherwise we will get the meaning of the sentence wrong, e.g. we will say Jane scares Peter instead of Peter scares Jane

Consequently, when using a verb in a sentence, we need to know (a) the number of participants, (b) their roles in the sentence, and (c) how those roles are ordered.

Argument structure

Definition

Information included in the lexical entry of the verb, which specifies (a) the number of essential participants (valence), (b) their roles, and (c) the order of those roles.

Essential participants are known as 'arguments'

Argument structure is partly semantic / partly syntactic:

  1. Semantic level: roles specified by the verb.
    The roles are closely linked to the meaning of the verb. For example, it is difficult to think of a giving event without imagining three entities: a GIVER, a RECIPIENT, and a THING BEING TRANSFERRED
  2. Syntactic level: ordering of roles

Non-essential participants are often classified as adverbials

  1. She topped the cake [ with cream ]
  2. She beat the eggs [ with a whisk ]
  3. She ate the bananas [ with custard ]
  4. She scoffed the cake [ with her best friend ]

Which of the `with' phrases describe an essential participant? Could the event take place without it? I would say that the verb top requires a thing which we are putting on top (cream) so this is a genuine argument. By contrast, with custard and with her best friend both describe things which are completely optional. I don't eat everything with custard!! 2. lies somewhere in the middle.

Determining valency

How do we determine essential participants? Those which are obligatory? We can test for obligatoriness by omitting an presumed argument, and seeing how this impacts on grammaticality

  1. She dropped the pen
  2. She took the jacket

But most arguments can be rendered optional in certain contexts

  1. She give [ money ] to charity
  2. They all gave presents to Mary. Paul gave a pen (to Mary), Jenny gave a book (to Mary), and Brad gave a watch (to Mary)
  3. COOKING INSTRUCTIONS: Chop (the carrots) and stir (them) into the sauce

So obligatoriness will only get you so far!

In addition, some verbs seem to elicit a wide variety of arguments

  1. [ He ] paints [ walls ]
  2. [ He ] painted [ the wall ] [ red ]
  3. [ He ] painted [ the wall ] [ red ] [ with a paintbrush ] and [ some paint ]
  4. [ This brush ] paints well

There are many potential arguments. Which ones are essential?

Finally sometimes verbs can take "extra-valent" arguments which sound "added on"

  1. She swam [ ten lengths ]
  2. They laughed [ the teacher ] [ out of the room ]

There is no foolproof way to determine valency

  1. Method 1: Work out which arguments are "nearly" obligatory by looking at at a corpus
  2. Method 2: Introspection. Shut your eyes and imagine the verb. How many entities are in the mental scene you have just conjured.

These two methods can occasionally give different results!

So there is no knock down method. If in doubt, shut your eyes, and click your heels together!

Do we need argument structure?

Why not just assume that the way we use words in sentences is a direct result of their meanings? This approach is sometimes described as a projectionist approach. 2 problems:

  1. Examples above (Jane fears Peter / Peter scares Jane) suggest that each verb must specify the order of the roles. A syntactic level of representation is arguably required for this, as we can't work out the order of arguments from the verb meaning (fear and scare arguably convey the same situation, with the only difference being the order of arguments)

  2. Verbs specify detailed information about sentence structure which is not obviously linked to their meaning, e.g. say versus tell have almost identical meanings, but are used in sentences in very different ways:

Say Tell
VERB + NOUN PHRASE He said his name X
VERB + CLAUSE (mini sentence) He said [that he was hungry] X
VERB + NOUN PHRASE + CLAUSE X He told his friend that he was angry

These meanings can be "boiled down" to a difference in argument structure (or more specifically valency). The main difference appears to be that say takes 2 arguments, while tell takes 3 arguments.

One final argument against the projectionist account is that verbs with very similar meanings have very different argument structure configurations, e.g.

  1. He gave a book to Mary / He gave her the book
  2. He donated a book to the library / *He donated the library a book

If we were just inferring a verb's syntactic behaviour from its meaning, we would have no way to account for this. (NB it's not sure how argument structure can account for this either)

Propositions

The verb and its arguments from a proposition.

A proposition is a mental scene involving at least one participant (or argument) participating in an event or situation (expressed by the verb, or "predicate")

A proposition contains those entities which make the most important contributions to the truth conditions of the sentence (the real world conditions under which the sentence is true). Nouns (arguments) and verbs make a major contribution to truth conditions, e.g.

  1. The dog chased the cat -> The robot washed the cat: TRUTH CONDITIONS HAVE COMPLETELY CHANGED
  2. The dog chased the cat -> The dog quickly chased a cat: MINOR CHANGE TO TRUTH CONDITIONS

Propositions come at the bottom of a three way heirarchy:

  • Propositional level

chase(dog,cat)

  • Sentence level

a. The dog chased the cat

b. It chased the cat

c. The cat was chased by the dog

  • Utterance level

A: Is your dog energetic? B: Well, it chases the neighbour's cat every day!

We need propositions to explain how different surface forms (e.g. 2) can have the same underlying meaning. The proposition IS the underlying meaning.

Thematic relations (roles)

Researchers have proposed that the roles given by verbs are universal (i.e. found across languages), and finite (i.e. there are a small set of them).

Main roles for Noun Phrases

The main roles for Noun Phrases are AGENT, PATIENT, EXPERIENCER and THEME

Test AGENT PATIENT EXPERIENCER THEME
Does entity deliberately initate the action?
Can we say 'what X did was Y...'		 Yes No No No
Is entity affected?
Cann we say 'what happend to X was...'		 Yes Yes No
Is entity affected physically? Yes No

NB this table should be read as a decision tree.

Try to determine the thematic relations of the Noun Phrases in the following sentences:

  1. Charles crashed the car
  2. Mavis heard the noise
  3. The noise startled Mavis
  4. The tree fell down in the storm
  5. Ali considered the exciting proposal
  6. Fatimah hated the start of term
  7. The swing broke under his weight
  8. The doctor felt the patient's foot
  9. I like having a bath with my clothes on
  10. Jack liked Susan's holiday snaps on Facebook.

Other roles for Noun Phrases

Benefactive is the role typically given to Indirect Object Noun Phrases, e.g.

  1. She gave [ him BEN. ] [ a book PAT. ]
  2. She bought [ a book PAT. ] [ for him BEN. ]

Possessor is the owner of something

  1. [ Jack POSS. ] has/owns a Ferrari
  2. The house belongs to [ Martha POSS. ]

Roles for other types of phrases

Attributives

Phrases which describe a property of something else are called ATTRIBUTIVES, e.g.

  1. Janice feels happyATTR
  2. Losing at bingo makes Martha sadATTR
  3. Jack is in a moodATTR

We can often make questions about attributives using the question word how, e.g.

  1. Q: How does janice feel? A: Happy

ATTRIBUTIVES are mapped to Subject and Object Complements (Cs, Co)

Locatives

Phrases which describe locations are sometimes called LOCATIVES, e.g.

  1. Jason is in the park LOC
  2. Pat loaded the hay onto the wagon LOC

But be careful for a LOCATIVE to be a genuine argument, it has to be selected by the verb. In the following sentences

  1. The girls played baseball in the park

the phrase in the park is not technically an argument because it is not chosen by the verb. However, researchers and clinicians have a tendency to label these non-arguments as arguments! How completely sloppy!

We can make questions about locatives using the question word where, e.g.

  1. Q: Where is Jason? A: In the park.

Instruments

An instrument is an object used to perform and action, e.g.

  1. Angela covered the food with a cloth INSTR

This is actually a dubious candidate for a genuine thematic relation. If a verb requires a specific instrument, the instrument is often made explicit in the verb, e.g.

  1. He hammered the nail (with a hammer)
  2. She filed her nails (with a nail file).

If a verb does not require a specific instrument, it is expressed using with, e.g.

  1. He scratched his back with a loofah

This is arguably not an essential participant in the scratching action, and this kind of phrase is always omissible. So it probably shouldn't be categorised as an argumnet (but many people do!)

Remember thematic relations

After Eating Peas All Tiny Babies Avoid Laughing In Public

AGENT, EXPERIENCER, PATIENT, THEME, BENEFACTIVE, ATTRIBUTIVE, LOCATIVE, INSTRUMENT, POSSESSOR

Further practice

  1. Jack considers himself a real gigolo
  2. Angie sent her father the bundle of letters last Tuesday
  3. The steering wheel came off in his hands
  4. Jance watched the hovering buzzard
  5. Who does this pencil case belong to?
  6. Jake painted the wall with red paint.
  7. Alina smelt the beautiful flowers